George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic and polemicist whose influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman, Pygmalionand Saint Joan. With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth26 July 1856
CityDublin, Ireland
CountryIreland
It is not the number of years we have behind us, but the number we have before us, that makes us careful and responsible and determined to find out the truth about everything.
No severity of punishment deters when detection is uncertain, as it always must be.
I do not, like the Fundamentalists, believe that creation stopped six thousand years ago after a week of hard work. Creation is going on all the time.
What right has any human being to talk of bringing up a child? You do not bring up a tree or a plant. It brings itself up. You have to give it a fair chance by tilling the soil.
Worst of all, there is no sign of any relaxation of antisemitism. Logically it has nothing to do with Fascism. But the human raceis imitative rather than logical; and as Fascism spreads antisemitism spreads.
It is not true that men can be divided into absolutely honest persons and absolutely dishonest ones. Our honesty varies with the strain put on it.
Men are always thinking that they are going to do something grandly wicked to their enemies; but when it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.
Unless comedy touches me as well as amuses me, it leaves me with a sense of having wasted my evening. I go to the theatre to be moved to laughter, not to be tickled or bustled into it.
The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery.
As I write, there is a craze for what is called psychoanalysis, or the cure of diseases by explaining to the patient what is the matter with him: an excellent plan if you happen to know what is the matter with him, especially when the explanation is that there is nothing the matter with him.
Everybody who does not live in a prostitute's bed and on a diet of cocaine snow is called an ascetic nowadays.
In my dreams is a country where the State is the Church and the Church the people: three in one and one in three. It is a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and one in three. It is a temple in which the priest is the worshiper and the worshiper the worshipped: three in one and one in three. It is a godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in one and one in three.
Bible worship, though at its best it may achieve sublimity by keeping its head in the skies, may also make itself both ridiculousand dangerous by having its feet off the ground.
The degree of tolerance attainable at any moment depends on the strain under which society is maintaining its cohesion.